Both police, fire depts. seek additional staff

Thursday

May 22, 2014 at 3:15 AM

By Liz Markhlevskayalmark@fosters.com

ROCHESTER — The Police and Fire departments are both asking for additional staff for next year

“We really run shifts at bare minimums,” said Police Chief Michael Allen, though he said he would never run shifts that would jeopardize public safety. He also said that overtime for police officers is an issue at the department.

Fire Chief Norm Sanborn said he is requesting two additional firefighters to help with increasing calls for service, as well as simultaneous fire-related incidents in the city. Last year, he said, the department responded to 405 simultaneous calls, of which 46 involved three or more overlapping incidents.

He said that at one point last year, firefighters had to split up between a working fire and a major gas leak occurring at the same time in Rochester, leaving both incidents understaffed for some time. In another case, firefighters were on scene at a working fire while seven other incidents were all occurring at the same time in the city.

Sanborn said that while mutual aid is helpful in those types of scenarios, departments in neighboring towns cannot help with the initial response to such cases. Typically, Rochester firefighters operate alone for 15 minutes before mutual aid arrives.

According to Sanborn, the Fire Department implements shifts staffed with eight firefighters — five firefighters at the central station, and three in the Gonic station. However, to save money, most of the time the department has only seven firefighters staffing the shifts.

Sanborn said staffing the department with only seven firefighters per shift prevents a lot of overtime costs — last year, the cost savings was $176,000.

“We make it work, we do the best we can with what we’ve got,” said Sanborn.

In addition, Sanborn said the additional firefighters would help build up manpower for a future third fire station, which he hopes will be constructed in the next decade.

He said one additional firefighter would cost about $74,098, including salary, benefits and gear, while two firefighters would cost $148,196. In addition, the department is requesting $20,000 in additional funds for overtime, which is also not included in the city manager’s proposed budget.

During the April 29 meeting, City Council member Elaine Lauterborn said while she’s convinced the Fire Department is in need of new staff, she said she would not support overriding the tax cap for that purpose. She said the council would need to find cost savings in other parts of the budget in order to fund the additional staff.